Lily Burana

Who is Lily Burana?

Lily Burana is an American writer whose publications include the memoir I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles, the novel Try and Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America.

I Love a Man in Uniform won the ELLE Magazine Reader's Prize in May 2009.

Strip City was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, Salon, New York Newsday, and The Rocky Mountain News. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly published a feature called "So You Want to Write a Memoir," which indexed a thousand recent memoirs by subject. Strip City was among ten memoirs cited for their singular quality: "Whatever you might expect from a cross-country stripping odyssey, this surely isn't it. For one thing, Burana's eloquent, thoughtful goodbye to her longtime craft of bump-and-grind is decidedly unsexy. For another, her experiences frame a sort of social history of strip clubs and the girls who work at them."

As a journalist, she frequently writes about culture, gender, and women's issues, with a recent emphasis on the domestic side of military affairs. She has written for the Washington Post, GQ, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Self, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, the Village Voice, and the New York Observer. She was a contributing editor at New York Magazine and SPIN. As a public speaker, she has appeared at The United States Military Academy, Columbia University, San Francisco State University, and the San Francisco Art Institute.